谁是“颠倒了的本质主义者”?——新世纪特里·伊格尔顿本质主义立场发微

Who is “Inverted Essentialist”?——An Exploration on Terry Eagleton's Essentialism of New Century

三十年前的伊格尔顿更像一位唯名论意义上的反本质主义者,三十年后他更像一位实在论意义上的本质主义者,此时的本质是认识上的本质,并非实存中的本质,伊格尔顿并未从这个主义倒向那个主义。斯坦利·费什等人将认识论上的本质主义放到了存在论语境中,他们把本质主义颠倒了。我们需要从亚里士多德的"四谓词"说以及"十范畴"说的视角来重新审视这些误读。对亚里士多德和托马斯·阿奎那而言,事物的本质就在事物本身,本质并不是事物的先决条件,事物的存在才是本质的前提,定义和本质是用来认识世界的,可后现代主义者们却以为认识世界必须先拥有定义,这种"颠倒"反映了认识上常犯的逻辑错误。

Terry Eagleton was more like an anti-essentialist 30 years ago for nominalism, and now he is an essentialist in realism sense, but he didn＇t convert from one ism to another. We should reinspect some misreadings from Aristotle＇s perspec- tives of the theory of four predictions and his ten categories. For Aristotle and Aquinas, the essence of matters lies in matters themselves, but not the prerequisite for matters ; the existence of matters is the premise for the essence. Definition and essence are used for the cognition of the world. But the post-modernists affirm that definition decides the world, therefore this ＂inver- sion＂ reflects some logical errors in our recognition.